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Accidental Aesop: The whole film can seen as a deconstruction of Fanservice and how a series should never rely on it to gain viewers. Because at the end of the day all you've done is objectify and humiliate a human being. Remember, this film was made during a time where anime Fanservice was absolutely tame compared to today's standards and before anime wasthrown into the garbage.

Adaptation Displacement: A comparatively mild example; it's fairly frequently mentioned that it's based on a novel, including on the DVD case for the anime... but you'll be hard-pressed to find a Westerner who has heard of the novel outside that, or knows anything about it. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find much English information regarding the novel at all. From what little we do know, though, the movie's plot is more of an original story than an adaptation.

Epileptic Trees: There is an amazing fan theorynote Warning: the link contains spoilers for Black Swan and Taxi Driver out there that suggests that both Mima and Ruki are actually delusions of a third person who is mentioned in passing. Long story short, a woman named Yoko Takakura is in an insane asylum for murdering several men, along with her sister, a model whom Yoko has assumed the identity of. From the asylum, Yoko imagines the entirety of the film's story, with Mima as her ideal self, Ruki her actual self, and the actual doctors around her recast as actors on the Double Bind TV show. She imagines her own murders as actually committed by a disfigured man (Me-Mania) and her own rape as a scene in the TV show. By the film's end, her delusion continues as her perfect Mima personality is allowed out of the hospital to persue her own life. The evidence for this theory lies in the dialogue of the Double Bind actors.

The night club gang rape scene is eerily and horrifyingly reminiscent of a similar event that took place in Tel-Aviv 18 years later.

Hell Is That Noise: Several sounds/songs, like "Virtua Mima" which is mostly played during all of the high-tension/insanity filled scenes. The song makes use of the sounds of chimes, bells, and metal clinking together... the percussions almost resembling the sound of one's heartbeat. There are several whispery thin voices singing soulfully, not necessarily in chorus as the play of notes travel erratically from high to low (soprano to bass). It all comes together to resemble some rather creepy sounding tribal music. It's the kind of music that will make you want to dive under your bed covers and stay there for a while.

Rica Matsumoto's role as Rumi became this, as she dubbed Selena Quintanilla in the Japanese dub of that film. This is particularly ironic because the Real Life Selena Quintanilla was murdered by a Loony Fan, in the same way both Me-Mania and Rumi herself tries to do this on Mima.

Uncanny Valley: Mima goes through a journey filled with all kinds of things nightmarish throughout the movie, and while most of the character designs lean toward realistic, there are two notable exceptions: Me-Mania, who is obviously creepy-looking from the start, and Rumi, who, like him, has eyes that are too widely spaced.

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